


Heart's a Mess.

by betfleck



Series: Is it too much to ask for? [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Comfort/Angst, F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 08:20:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12931305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betfleck/pseuds/betfleck
Summary: He's seeing her doubled, she's seeing him halved.





	Heart's a Mess.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elleyvn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elleyvn/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She is not his to pride himself on.

He is a man grounded by routine.

Kakashi does not like the way the sun blazes this urgent and ruthless this early in the morning. He does not like the way the rays seep -- crisp and uninvited -- through the thick fabric of his uniform. It's supposed to be a cold day, the leaves are racked brown and worn (much like himself) and he finds the way they fall tragically endearing. _There's nothing endearing about tragedies!_ Soundless and dead. Winter's rolling around dangerously fast, it smells like dew and he drinks the morning fog like his favourite breath.

The setting stirs him in unsettling ways. There's supposed to be rain, darkness, the kind of thick haze that veils the sharp carvings of her name on her gravestone. The mist no longer dances to comfort him. But there's the sun. Always the sun, bright and piercing and Kami he is so undeserving of warmth.

He thinks she does this on purpose. He never allows himself to be warmed by the gesture, but relinquishing it is a step too hard (seventeen years counting) and he's a man too selfish (then or now?) so he closes his eyes and clings to what's left of her company and if he's lucky he'll see smiles instead of tears, she's there to hold his hand not have it through her chest.

He drops the tulips on her gravestone. "Happy birthday Rin." It's a confession but he's not seeking absolve. 

(Obito is laughing somewhere.)

_Thank you Kakashi-kun!_ He walks away a lucky man.

(Each year her smile fades a little more.)

-  
-

"Couldn't sleep? You're only 45 minutes late, I gotta hand it to you Kakashi-sensei, I'm almost impressed!" Sakura is a little more kniving each time they meet. He appreciates it in shades of bittersweet. It is barely 8.00AM but her nagging is something he's missed, it's comfort in irritation. He's tempted to tease but the pink brow she lifts is way too threatening for his liking, it only serves as a reminder of how hard she punches these days.

"If it isn't my favourite pupil!" _Easy now._ He smiles, she mirrors involuntarily then scoffs...but, is that a blush he sees? Kakashi is glad to see there are things that don't change. "I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long." It's almost an apology, mostly for old times' sake. His hand finds its way to his nape, she frets over the Godaime and something along the lines of her short-tempered impatience, and somewhere along their walk to Tsunade's office, their dynamic finds itself again after months of silence and they're somewhat back to what they used to be.

(Fragments of what they never were.)

There are things that will forever rattle the bones that make him. Tsunade yells the way she splits mountains, abrupt and piercing. Her breath is tainted by the freshness of mouthwash and the slightest bitterness of sake. He can't tell wether it's Shizune that has Tonton shaking or the opposite, Kakashi is humoured but unimpressed and once again glad to see there are constants. Sakura glares knives at him and he makes a mental note to work on his punctuality sometime soon.

Tsunade clears her throat and allows sterness to take her hold. "Haruno Sakura and Hatake Kakashi, you're to travel to the Three Wolves range, in the outskirts of the Land of Iron where General Mifune's daughter Shimizu has been reported kidnapped by mist rogue ninja in demand of General Mifune's Kurosowa katana as ransom. Your two-men squad is to infiltrate their hideout, rescue Shimizu and provide medical attention where necessary as well as capture the rogue ninja. Dispatch by noon today. Any questions?" There's something about her tone that tells him she really isn't about to entertain any questions or complaints, Sakura, stiff and sharp, takes the hint and the Godaime proceeds. "Dismissed then."

Their walk out of the office is quiet. They're suspended by a tension Kakashi will never be able to place. She is close, almost shoulder to shoulder, but each second she's a little more distant. He wonders where her thoughts take her. Understandably, it is their first mission alone. Since Naruto, the only thing Team 7's been is water under the bridge, he only wishes they could get over it this is an unstable bridge and he is so afraid he won't be able to pull them out once it collapses. Sasuke's gone, Naruto dives willfully and wholly, and Sakura cannot stop staring down. He knows she is strong, he's heard she carries boulders single-handedly lately and heals like Apollo, only he wishes she were a little more selfish...

(Only he's glad she's everything but.)

"We should train or at least get a warm up in before we leave. It's been a while, we should re-familiarise ourselves if we're going to be fighting together." It's an offer but he's not planning on hearing a no for an answer. Awkwardness and angst and all the things that repel his very character aside, he is still Team Captain and this is still a mission.

"In two hours? I have to clear my schedule and get someone to cover my shifts at the hospital." She speaks light and smooth. She sounds so much like herself that Kakashi is envious. Here, mumbling something about toxicology with Shizune as she scratches and annotates on the small notepad she carries, she's to his left and lagging to the peripherals of his right lead eye. He doesn't want to turn so he just lets himself be swayed by the sound of her pen against paper and the medical terms he'll never understand. He thinks about how beautifully time can elapse for some. He nods but he knows she's far by now.

"Be late and I'll kill you!" She's gone by the swash of pink and scent of fast-fading strawberry shampoo.

-  
-

Sakura punches earthquakes.

Kakashi is almost panting. He won't let her land a hit. He cannot let her land a hit, otherwise it is the end of him, unless she's willing to humour him and stitch him up after breaking him.

"You're getting old Kakashi-sensei!" And he really is. He admits to it as easily and heavily as breathing. And he does, _faster now._

She's charging at him, fast and reckless and he's tired of jumping for higher ground and it's such a hassle landing safely in the ruins of the scorched earth she leaves.

"Doton; Doryuuheki!" The wall is only up for a fraction of a second before her fist wrecks it. It's longer than he needs and when the dust settles he's gone in a puff of smoke, now behind her with a kunai to her throat. Sakura pulls a perplexed look that almost has him fooled, her lips curve into a thin smirk and right now, he thinks he should be gone in spades, but she is right there, ever-present in ways that will only hurt him. The clone is gone in puffs of white and Kakashi _really_ shouldn't have to bring out his sharingan up against someone like Sakura. Except she's long left that idea of her behind. Now there's brutal strength to back up her smarts.

He blinks the sharingan awake and she comes in fast from above, her fist leading the air torn and she is falling but this does not look like falling, she's got the sun behind her pink silhouette, the emerald of her eyes is sharp against the red of his sharingan, it is only for a moment, she is tall and glowing and diving brash and braze and before he is hit he thinks he is seeing her through Naruto's eyes, only in greatness he has yet to witness.

Kakashi is hit.

Abruptly and wholly, in puffs of smoke and the wood of log, he jumps before the smoke clears, Sakura follows, thick-thighed and evasive in a leap that allows him to catch her eye as she ascends higher while he's at his peak ready to fall back (in more ways than one), she twists her body and turns to him when she's directly above him, she smiles and his descent is graced by her fist. Kakashi thinks of what could've been. He robbed her heart off (her chest) growth. _It's not your fault._ He does not let it happen again. Sakura flourishes in his absence.

(She is not his to pride himself on.)

Naruto is miles and months away, Kakashi wonders what Jiraiya has instilled for him, he knows it's probably somewhere along the lines of glorious, the kind that will have him seeing the Yondaime under blonde curls and blue eyes. Always blue eyes. The Yondaime hangs grey clouds over his head when it comes to Naruto, Kakashi did not ask for him. _Protect him._ He already has Jiraiya and he is better fit to teach Naruto what he taught his father than Kakashi is to teach him what his father had him. It wasn't even much. It wasn't enough to save them. He wasn't there to save them...The irony grabs Kakashi by the neck. _And where the hell were you?_

He thinks he should do it for Obito at least, if not Minato, Obito, but they're too alike and Kakashi can not bear it for long and things shouldn't have to end the same, cycle after cycle. So he leaves him be. Leaves him grow. But Naruto is an idiot. And he will come back and Kushina is forever nagging and she's chained him down already and none of them can see where this leads.

Sasuke was always the smartest. It's only fitting that last Uchiha be so. He ran first, he won't come back, not to them. Not wholly. Kakashi wants to say it was for Obito too, to honour his lost Uchiha, but Kakashi is not a liar. It was for himself, because Sasuke is the best of him through generations and Kakashi is selfish. So he taught him, he honed him and he enjoyed it, he was his favourite, he planted seeds of all the things he never was and he made sure Sasuke grew to be them. But Sasuke was always the smartest, he copied him and he left. Always a step ahead of him.

(He deserved it.)

Sakura is painfully stupid, she is still here and her hands are soft and the glowing green of her chakra only does her eyes impossible favours and he can feel her essence inside of him, warm and embracing, sees through all that he is, stays for all he never was. She heals years beyond her.

(He wants to take it all and give it back to her, this is what he stole from her.)

"I wasn't expecting you to go down this easy, Kakashi-sensei...It's almost like you weren't even--" He watches her face fall and then twist into something like disgust. (She still pouts the same.) He is slapped awake by hands too soft to break his nose. He laughs. (It hurts.) "You're unbelievable Kakashi-sensei!" Her tone is laced with that edge of rage she used to talk down to Naruto with. It's sharper and backed up by the grace of maturity.

"Sakura, you've impr--"

"Kakashi-sensei, don't pull your punches on me...Don't laugh at me." There's a constant longing for something he cannot give to her that slips slicked attached to her words. He thought that Sakura was gone. (There are parts of him glad she's not.) He doesn't say anything, her chakra stings now. He deserves it.

(She's thirteen and desperate. He is thirteen and unmoved.)

"Sakura, I'm sorry." He watches her shoulders tense like she's bracing herself and he wants to punch himself.

"It's not your fault." She doesn't look at him, her chakra stings less inside of him.

"It's not yours either." There are too many things unsaid, too many things she needs to hear that he cannot bring himself to say even in this lifetime. The silence stretches until she is done healing him.

"See you at noon Kakashi-sensei." He watches her walk away, dusty, bruised and still graceful. The pink shrinks until it's a blur in the distance and then she is gone, leaving only the cracked ground in her wake.

Kakashi carries himself home as he would anywhere else -- shoulders hunched and aching. (He is envious of her strength.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so let's see how well I handle this while sticking to canon :3 Criticism is always appreciated!!

**Author's Note:**

> Okayyy! I'm back! This is a follow up to Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High? But get this...In Kakashi's POV which I'm support scared of messing up because he's such an intricate character and maybe my grasp on him isn't 100% It was much easier to write for 13 year old Sakura tbh but eh we'll see where this goes! Hopefully he seems in character???
> 
> It's taken me forever to finally get around to writing it because I originally planned WYOCMWYH to be a one-shot but it was so well-received and had so much untouched potential for a follow-up that I just couldn't help it!?? This will be multi-chaptered and I'll probably update in a few days! Anyways criticism is always appreciated! Thanks for reading xx


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